


Sorairo Tenshi

by Jsyrin, Rex_Lupin



Series: ToZverse [11]
Category: Rebuild of Evangelion | Evangelion: New Theatrical Edition, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, ゼロの使い魔 | Zero no Tsukaima | The Familiar of Zero
Genre: Alternate Universe - Crack, Angels Fucking Things Up Again, F/F, F/M, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, here we go again, spiral power
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:34:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27473587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jsyrin/pseuds/Jsyrin, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rex_Lupin/pseuds/Rex_Lupin
Summary: The Zeruels disagree on the universe where they could attain ultimate power, until a suggestion causes them to switch destination. Now Zeruel, the Rebuild version, heads off to TTGL with her master......TTGL? As in, the world where endless power comes from spirals?Just like in an Angel's Core?Oh no.
Series: ToZverse [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1625149
Comments: 5
Kudos: 19





	1. Littner

1)

Zeruel and her twin had a problem. A serious one, at that. 

Each one wished to be the strongest in all the land, and each had a perfect place to achieve it- and yet, unfortunately, they disagreed on the perfect place for it to happen. 

Zeru, the original, who was eaten in her first timeline, had her heart set on the land of human drive and giant robots, arguing that if any place would let them attain their peak, it would be the world with limitless will and determination. 

Zeruel, the remaster, she who became a Familiar, disagreed. Her ideal place was the world with monkeys and demons, with power levels scaling indefinitely. Nothing, she declared, would change her mind. 

It was the latter's Master who brought resolution to the argument: Let them try out each other's choices, let them train and evolve, let see what the future brought afterwards.

And so did Zeruel and her Master set off to the world of Ganmen, where the mysterious Spiral Energy resided. Oh boy.

“... This entire planet feels like a desert,” Cattleya immediately muttered, chewing on her lip as they looked about the immediate area, seeing pretty much nothing but rocky outcroppings and canyons, flat expanses of sand and reddish earth with not a drop of water in sight.

“There’s life around here,” Zeruel argued. “I can feel it. Just not on the... surface...” She blinked. “Catt, what’s the Earth Element tell you about the underground?”

“There’s what might be hundreds of cave systems spread out across the continent,” Cattleya answered, kneeling down and pressing her hand against the ground. “Humans, trapped beneath the surface- entire civilizations, it feels like, but no more than… maybe fifty thousand at the very most. There’s… something else too- life on the surface, just further away. Mecha, piloted by… furries?”

“ _ Sweet, _ ” Zeruel grinned. “I wanna check out the mecha. You wanna come, or do you wanna see what the humans are up to?”

“I believe I would like to see how the humans are doing for now,” Cattleya answered, chewing her lip thoughtfully as she tapped the ground. “I have a number of questions that I would like answered, but at the same time- well. You go have your fun. Just remember to not destroy  _ too _ many things.”

“Will do!” Zeruel giggled, doing a few cartwheels before sprinting off into the distance. “You have your fun too, Master!” came a distant yell.

Cattleya giggled fondly. “That goof,” she sighed to herself. She then fashioned herself a bubble of Earth suspiciously similar to an elevator, and descended into the comforting darkness below.

The village below was… honestly nothing special, if she were honest. A bunch of people milling around, living their lives in the dark, lit only by strings of mining lights. The people there seemed pretty satisfied with their lives, if only because they probably didn’t know any better.

Cattleya decided to keep out of sight for now, though, since an insular, underground village likely would immediately take notice of someone new appearing in their midst without any warning. She didn’t want to spook the locals, after all- she mostly just wanted to see what was going on.

Not much happened for a while.

Life went on in the little village that the inhabitants called Littner- Cattleya had never really needed to show herself, and so stuck to the shadows and did little acts of kindness where she could. She may have been an earth mage, but she still had enough know-how to heal the sick and wounded with water magic, as well as the ability to make and repair toys for children, make the strange underground varieties of plants that Littner cultivated grow a little better, and make food stores last a little longer without going bad.

She did almost have to reveal herself during one incident, though, when she stopped a weapons cache hidden in a secret alcove that the town hadn’t known about from leaking toxic substances into the food storage area.

Still, Littner was a little cramped, and despite the fact that its citizens were more than happy to live out their days in a sealed off cave with crappy old tech keeping them from suffocating or drowning in their own waste products, fate itself felt… stagnated when Cattleya arrived.

Something had to change in Littner, and she wasn’t entirely sure what it was supposed to be.

<>

Meanwhile, Zeruel was…

Lost. 

Really. Fucking. Lost.

But that was a good thing, when the entire purpose of her explorations was to find loads of brand new places, right?

Or it would have been if THERE WAS ANYTHING TO FIND IN THIS FUCKING DESERT!

The Angel let out an annoyed  _ sigh. _ Really, where  _ was _ everything? She flared her Soul again- she’d been doing that for hours, just in the hopes that if  _ anyone _ could detect that, they’d come running.

Still nothing.

_ Still _ noth-

Wait.

Wait wait wait- was that-?

Loud stomping noises echoed out in the distance- the clashing of metal against metal, grinding gears, whirring motors, the glint of painted steel and swinging arms, bipedal, approximately, but shaped oddly and in a more fantastical and cartoonish manner than the traditional mecha.

It was…

Well, it was more like a face with legs, honestly. Like, some kind of weird… pig… thing… with stubby arms and legs, mucking about and meandering through the columns and stacks of rock with nary a care in the world- to the point that Zeruel could actually  _ hear _ the external speakers of the damned thing. Whatever the pilot was… they certainly were  _ not _ winning any awards for singing anytime soon.

“Now, to be subtle...?” Zeruel murmured, “or to...”

She snorted to herself, and rammed the mech at speed. “Or to it is!”

“GAH! WHO DID THAT!?” the mecha immediately screamed out, its faceplate denting as Zeruel slammed into it and knocked it off balance, stubby limbs flailing around comically as it tried not to fall over.

“I did!” Zeruel chirped. “Hey, what do you call your mecha?”

“IMPUDENT HUMAN WRETCH! HOW DARE YOU DAMAGE MY GANMEN WITH YOUR ATTACK!?” the pilot screamed, catching his balance and leaping back with surprising agility despite the sheer weight of his mecha, drawing a pair of swords that gleamed in the light and were about as tall as the nearly eighteen meter tall robot each. “I’LL KILL YOU FOR THAT!” 

Zeruel grinned widely. “One,  _ not _ human. Two, you’re welcome to  _ try. _ Three, I’m going to  _ relish _ the challenge anyway! COME AT ME!”

Her hair sharpened from dreadlocks to prehensile ribbons. “SHOW ME YOUR POWER,  _ GANMEN!!! _ ”

With an incoherent scream of rage, the Ganmen charged forward, shaking the earth with every single step as its swords swung around violently…

And clanged harmlessly off of the AT-Field covered ribbons of Zeruel’s hair.

“WHAT!?”

“... Okay nevermind, you’re weak as hell. Dammit,” Zeruel huffed, immediately losing her enthusiasm as the Ganmen failed to so much as  _ scratch _ her AT Field, wrapping the Ganmen in her ribbons as she flexed her soul and let some of her Angelic nature shine through. With a mere flick of her hair, the Ganmen swung around at the end of the ribbons and-

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-”

Soared straight over the horizon.

“... Wait was that where Cattleya went?” Zeruel muttered, scratching her head awkwardly before deciding to start heading back in that direction. “I…  _ can’t _ have thrown the Ganmen  _ that _ far… but… just in case…”

Zeruel bit her lip as she began sprinting back towards where she’d separated from her Master. She may have been  _ several  _ days of walking away, but there was always the chance that she may or may not have thrown the Ganmen farther than she’d intended to. 

“ADAM I really hope I didn’t fuck up,” Zeruel muttered, shaking her head as she ran.

<>

Cattleya was startled out of her observations of the Littner village by a major distraction - in the form of a mecha crashing through the roof of the village. She quietly palmed her face. “Damn it, Zeruel...”

She took in the immediate chaos that spawned from the mecha crashing through the roof of the cave, just barely flexing her AT Field to make sure that nobody would get crushed by falling rocks and/or stupid and ugly looking giant robot with equally stupid giant swords.

“Run! We gotta get outta here!” someone shouted, the cave itself shaking as the mecha sparked and trembled, flailing around in its pseudo-death throes, joints whirring and grinding before the machine itself finally shut down… and immediately started smoking.

“It’s gonna blow!”

“Run!”

“Help!”

“Get to the surface!”

Immediately a flood of people began heading for the surface, picking their way across the sloping path of rubble left behind the mecha’s ballistic arc.

As the village evacuated, Cattleya looked around, making sure nobody was caught up or-

“Gah!”

Stuck under rubble from the unstable pile of rocks making up the slope to the surface.

Shit.

Calling up the Earth Element, she  _ gently _ moved the rocks away from the girl, scooping her up to a carry. “I’ve got you,” she murmured. “Don’t worry.”

“T-thank you…” the girl replied weakly, groaning quietly as the movements twinged her injured leg and aggravated the massive gash on her brow that stained her already cherry red hair a horrible rusty color. She whimpered quietly, then looked back and patted Cattleya’s shoulder with a frantic expression. “W-we need to move faster- t-that thing it’s- I think it’s going to explode!”

Cattleya narrowed her eyes. “I  _ got _ you,” she repeated. Under her feet, loose rocks fused together into a much more stable footing as she scrambled up the slope. Behind her, the mecha started vibrating.

As she dove out of the hole and onto the surface, the girl still in her arms, the thing finally decided to explode.

Right before the blast wave could kill the girl in her arms, though, Cattleya simply flexed her soul as she kicked the ground behind her, throwing up a large rock just in time to shield the two of them from the flames and smoke and shockwave from the exploding… still exploding… still exploding- now completely burnt out and smoking husk of a crater that used to be Littner village, with a few massive scraps of robot parts lying about.

Somehow, that weapons storage area and all the important parts of the village were still more or less intact despite having just experienced a titanic quadruple explosion the likes of which came straight out of a shonen anime.

“.... Hm. The physics here seem… odd,” Cattleya deadpanned as she stood up and examined the damage, sighing a bit as she looked down at the girl in her arms- well, perhaps ‘young woman’ would have been more appropriate, considering her biological age was just shy of twenty years old. “Hi there, I’m Cattleya. What’s your name?”

“Y-yoko… I…” the girl whimpered and winced, clutching her ribs as she coughed up a worrying amount of blood. “Ngh… t-that… that isn’t good…”

“You have a lot of internal damage,” Cattleya murmured, using Water to scan Yoko and biting her lip. “Now I wish I put more hours into healing humans and not animals... oh forget it. Yoko?” she whispered. “I think I can heal you, but it would...  _ change _ you. Do you accept the risk?”

“W- ngh… it hurts a lot… p-please…” Yoko murmured, coughing and shuddering as she all but seized up in Cattleya’s arms. “J-just, do whatever you have to… I don’t… I don’t wanna die…”

“Okay,” Cattleya sighed. “Now, this might feel weird...” She produced a Core from somewhere and placed it between Yoko’s breasts. “Hold still.” She pressed it down.

Yoko gasped and let out a squeal that was somewhere between surprise and pain as the Core sank into her chest, writhing and choking in Cattleya’s arms as her body and soul changed, glowing brightly as her injuries healed and the Core itself sank down deeper into her body and replaced her heart.

“... Huh, that doesn’t happen often,” Cattleya murmured, watching calmly as Yoko’s transformation died down, leaving the newly adopted Angel lying unconscious in her arms- right in time for the rest of the village to finally notice that the two of them were still alive, despite the crater that used to be Littner having caved in and exploded thrice.

"...Who are you, kind stranger?" came the first question from an unnamed man. 

Cattleya looked up slowly keeping one hand pressed against Yoko’s heart to make sure her new Core was settling in properly before addressing the man- a heavy set, somewhat world weary looking man who nonetheless seemed to be kind and honest just from what Cattleya could feel from his soul. She smiled and stood, curtseying a bit while making sure Yoko wouldn’t fall. “My name is Cattleya Yvette de la Fontaine. I’m… what you might describe as a simple traveler, making my way through the world.”

The man bowed. "I am Dayakka, chief of this Littner village. I thank you for stepping in to help us in this unforeseen disaster." 

“It’s no trouble at all,” Cattleya waved her hand idly, smiling as she walked over to the rest of the villagers and set Yoko down on a nearby rock in the shade so she could rest without overheating. “I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting  _ that _ to happen either, but I suppose it’s only fortunate that I was here when it did.”

“I wonder where that monstrous thing came from,” Dayaka murmured, rubbing his chin and looking around, squinting at the harsh light of the sun and frowning. “And.. I wonder if there might be  _ more _ of them out there…”

Cattleya sighed and shrugged, looking off into the distance to where she could feel Zeruel’s soul rushing their way, the barest hint of panic emanating from her Familiar’s direction as she approached at speed. “... I have a feeling we’re about to find out…”


	2. Angels

"Cattleya!" Zeruel shouted as soon as she got near. "Are you OK? I came as soon as I could - what happened here? Are you hurt?" 

Cattleya hummed. "It was the strangest thing," she noted. "Out of nowhere, an enormous metal monster fell through the ceiling of Littner Village, causing a hasty evacuation. I of course stepped in to help, but nobody knows where it came from. Or what could have happened." 

She narrowed her eyes. " _ Zeruel de la Fontaine.  _ Do you happen to have an explanation? You're acting very suspicious right now." 

“I uh…. may have uh… accidentally thrown a giant robot in the wrong direction…” Zeruel muttered, blushing a bit and fidgeting in place before shaking her head. “That’s not the important thing though! What’s important is that- oh jeez there’s a lotta people.”

Zeruel bit her lip and looked around, grimacing a bit before spotting a large gap in a nearby plateau that seemed to open into a smallish canyon. “Get everyone into that canyon over there- there’s more of those mechs incoming, and I think they spotted me running this way!”

Cattleya took a  _ deep  _ breath. "Dayakka, evacuate your people. I'll help.  _ Zeruel,"  _ she added sharply, " _ deal with the mess you've created."  _

“Yes ma’am!” Zeruel squeaked, saluting and running off to go secure the perimeter of the area while Cattleya turned back and began herding people towards the canyon, subtly raising the earth and hardening it around the area to form natural looking defenses in case Zeruel got… messy.

“So that young woman,” Dayakka began carefully. “Your... daughter? Sister? She seems... dangerous.”

“Dangerously enthusiastic,” Cattleya corrected, sighing. “As for our relation, that... is complicated. She’s my Familiar, but I’m not quite certain how to explain that relation in your terms...”

“A rambunctious child?” Dayakka offered.

Cattleya pondered that term. “That’s how she  _ acts, _ sure,” she agreed. “Let’s just... go and take cover, and watch what she does while I try to explain. Okay?”

“That works,” the chief agreed.

Soon after, once everyone was settled into the canyon, a trio of mechs arrived.

Stomping around, shaking the earth, roaring about like a bunch of idiots and buffoons as they approached the crater that used to be Littner village….

Only to immediately be cut down and completely  _ erased _ from existence by a pitch black whip that swept across the landscape in a blur of motion.

Zeruel’s arm, unraveled into its Angelic form, whistling and snapping as it coiled back up and returned to its human shape once again.

“As I said,” Cattleya deadpanned. “She’s my Familiar.”

“ _ What _ is she?” Dayakka breathed. “No human is capable of something like-”

“She’s an Angel,” Cattleya sighed. “Mind you, I won’t be surprised if humans around here turn out to  _ actually _ be capable of these sorts of things... the laws of physics are very strange around here.”

“... Ah… er-” Dayakka coughed awkwardly into his hand, scratching his head with his free hand as he dug his toe into the ground. “... What’s an … er… Angel? I’ve never heard that term before...”

Cattleya blinked. “Your culture doesn’t have an equivalent term? How odd.” She tapped her chin. “Well, a direct translation of what they are is ‘Messenger of God’, but practically, they’re loveable idiots you can always count on to have your back and lewd all over your friends.” She coughed. “...In my experience.”

“... S-she’s a god!?” Dayakka gaped, staring out at where Zeruel was idly making her way over before dropping to his knees in a deferential bow towards both Zeruel and Cattleya. “T-thank you for blessing our small village, oh mighty goddesses!”

Cattleya sighed. “No, we- we’re just Angels, really, my little  _ sister _ is the goddess and... that doesn’t help, does it.”

Dayakka continued bowing and prostrating himself, followed shortly by the rest of the village as the news disseminated through the crowd and Zeruel stepped into the canyon as well.

“Thank you o kind goddesses for saving us!” someone in the back of the crowd called out, bringing with them a mighty cheer as the crowd split itself between cheering and jumping for joy and seemingly having some kind of religious experience like Dayakka.

"You know," Zeruel remarked, coming to a stop next to her master, "of all the people to be mistaken for goddesses, you weren't even on the list." 

"Hush," Cattleya scolded. "What do we even do with them?" 

“I dunno, probably just bum some housing off of the- wait shit that doesn’t work anymore does it?” Zeruel sighed, grumbling as Cattleya looked around and immediately used her magic to start carving housing into the walls. “Dammit, okay well we might as well stick around to help out. A bunch of robots like that, there’s definitely some kind of military sending them out. We just gotta… keep driving them off I guess.”

"The village is on top of an ancient weapons stockpile," Cattleya mentioned. "Something about the narrative, you know..." 

"Think we've met the protagonist yet?" Zeruel mused. 

“Not yet, I don’t think. No one here seems to be the kind of protagonist this setting would necessitate, and, all told, I’m not sure I care to meet the protagonist anyway. They almost always tend to be idiot men,” Cattleya tittered to herself, idly shifting earth and stone around with a wave of her wand, constructing a very elaborately decorated and fully functional town into the walls of the canyon right next to where Littner used to be, with fully functioning stairways and roads turning what used to be a narrow crack in a plateau into a wide, almost bowl shaped area similar to how Littner had been constructed before, just on the surface now instead of in a pit.

"You know," Zeruel noted, "all of, well,  _ this,  _ it really doesn't help with your denials of being a Goddess." She gestured around. "I mean,  _ yes  _ there's a difference between a Greater Angel and a Lesser Goddess, but..." 

"But carving out an entire village with Pentagram-level Earth Magic isn't exactly helping," Cattleya sighed. "I know. I'm working on that." 

“Thank you, o kind goddess!” Dayakka continued spouting honorifics and praise as the entire collective populace of Littner bowed and made awed noises, the lot of them cheering and whooping for joy at the sight of their newly expanded and enlarged village. 

“It’s... nothing really,” Cattleya sighed awkwardly and put away her wand, frowning a bit and kneeling down by where Dayakka was bowing all the way to the floor. “Hey, come on, you don’t need to bow. We’re just here to help out, alright? Just think of us like a pair of helpful travellers is all.”

"They're probably going to make Yoko the High Priestess," Zeruel snickered. 

“Whnghghghghg-” came the eloquent reply of said girl, who slowly sat up from where she’d been laying and held a hand to her head, groaning and coughing as she tried to make sense of where she was. “... Why is it so bright… where… where am I…?”

"Welcome to the Family, kid," Zeruel offered, grinning wildly. "Also welcome to the surface, please try to ignore your chieftain trying to worship us. And probably you." 

“What…?” Yoko murmured, taking in the sight before her with squinted eyes, peering about before her mind caught up with her and she gasped, eyes shooting wide open as she took in  _ everything _ before her. The sprawling canyon town, the sunlight illuminating every facet of the canyon with orange-gold light, the distant shimmer of waterways and rivers in the background, the gentle swaying of grass further down the canyon towards the water, the sounds of animals gently baying and calling in the distance…

“.... It’s… beautiful up here…” Yoko murmured, jaw dropping as she sank to her knees in awe. “... Amazing…”

"The beauties of a planet with life on it," Cattleya mentioned, sitting down on the sand next to Yoko, "are something I never tire of. There just is  _ something  _ about it, isn't there?" 

"This town..." Yoko whispered. "Was this always above us? It's so grand and ancient, yet so empty... Where did its inhabitants go, so we could just  _ move in  _ like that? What happened to them?" 

Zeruel snickered behind them as Cattleya suddenly found her hair very interesting. "Actually," the Angel giggled, "it's brand new and carved out of the canyon by nothing but magic." She poked her master in the shoulder, finding the entire situation exceedingly amusing. "We would like it known that we are  _ not  _ gods, no matter how many divine miracles we pull out of our asses." 

Yoko  _ stared  _ between the hesitantly bustling town and the brightly blushing Cattleya. "I... just don't understand," she confessed. "Why do you deny being divine, when you make miracles like these, no," she looked down, "miracles like  _ myself  _ \- why do you do it?" 

"Nah, you misunderstand," Zeruel snickered. "We  _ are _ divine, we're just not  _ gods.  _ Those have their own place in the family though." 

"...Demigods?" Yoko offered uncertainly. 

"...We are Greater Angels," Cattleya finally answered. "But it shouldn't matter like that anyway! We're just  _ people  _ who happen to have the racial designation as Messengers of The Lord! I still don't even know who The Lord is!" 

She hid her face in her hands. "I just don't  _ want  _ to be worshipped, is that too much to ask!?" 

“Then maybe stop pulling earth magic based miracles out of your ass to people whose entire livelihood depends on the earth not collapsing on them,” Zeruel deadpanned, while Yoko just seemed more confused even as she poked her chest. 

“Is my heart supposed to feel… weird…?” She asked, right as her entire chest area began to glow through her skin- a brilliant emerald green centered directly on her heart. “Eh- EH!?”

Angel and Master looked over, wearing identical looks of baffled confusion.

“That’s... new,” Zeruel said slowly. “It’s new, right?”

“...yes it is,” Cattleya agreed. “Yoko, how exactly are you feeling? Are you okay?”

“... Um… floaty?” Yoko questioned vaguely, flapping her arms a bit as her chest continued glowing brighter and brighter, the ground itself starting to twist around her in a grand spiral pattern. “Like… um… I feel like t-there’s something rising up inside of me… l-like I’m gonna burst-!”

Zeruel and Cattleya scrambled to their feet, looking alarmed. "Try to stay calm," the latter cautioned. 

Zeruel's eyes, however, widened. "Belay that!" she cackled. "That power! Release it skywards! You are generating power! You are achieving a state of being-!" 

Yoko barely had any time to acknowledge Zeruel’s or Cattleya’s words as she continued to tremble and glow brighter and brighter, gasping for air as the glow shrouded her in brilliant greenish light before she let out a deafeningly loud scream and the energy all at once blasted into the clouds, spiralling wide and condensing to a point high above, almost in a drill shape.

And then…

Nothing.

Just Yoko standing there, her chest completely exposed and now bearing a curious spiralling tattoo in blood red ink, right between her breasts.

“Okay, not actually a god,” Zeruel murmured. “That  _ was _ a little too soon for an Apotheosis after all...”

“Eep!” Yoko immediately yelped once she realized exactly what had happened to her shirt, covering her chest and blushing bright red as she tried to preserve what little modesty she had left. “Don’t look!”

"Why?" Zeruel asked with total confusion. "They're lovely to look at. And possibly massage if you'll let me." 

Cattleya palmed her face. "Not everyone is obsessed with sex, you know," she remarked. "Perhaps young Yoko is simply embarrassed by your clumsy advances?" 

“That, or apparently living in a near pitch black cave still isn’t enough to get rid of nudity taboos,” Zeruel returned, watching as Yoko all but fled into the town with a loud squeal of indignation, running past the rest of the townsfolk in search of someplace where she could at least have some privacy. “... I wonder if she’ll figure out she can shapeshift clothes anytime soon.”

“Remind me how long it took  _ you _ to figure it out?” Cattleya asked sweetly. “I seem to have forgotten.”

“That was different,” Zeruel huffed, crossing her arms petulantly. “I just didn’t like wearing clothes is all.”

“Mhmm.”

“Shush, you.”


	3. Yoko

It turned out that apparently Yoko had figured out how to shapeshift clothing  _ very _ quickly indeed, seeing as she was now clad in an outfit that set her apart from the rest of the village in a rather extreme sort of way- a flame patterned bikini, a red striped, pink scarf, pink thigh high socks, black fingerless elbow gloves, flame patterned boots, and a curious little medallion pinned to her hair.

Something kind of like a mix of  _ stripper _ and  _ rave girl _ , if Zeruel had to imagine, though she was at least fully covered and not snorting cocaine out of another girl’s asshole, unlike either of the two… “professions”.

“You’re thinking of something lewd again,” Cattleya said. “You have  _ that face _ on.”

Zeruel shrugged, crossing her arms and leaning against the windowsill, watching as Yoko led an expedition down into the former Littner pit to retrieve the weapon stockpile there. “I was just thinking that Yoko’s new outfit looks more appropriate for a rave girl than anything else. Granted, it’s not like my normal outfits were any better until I figured out what style I liked.”

“... Your normal outfits were just you shifting your color palette around into the illusion of a bikini without actually putting on any clothes,” Cattleya deadpanned, rolling her eyes at Zeruel. “You were, in effect, only wearing body paint.”

“...what’s your point?” Zeruel asked, looking baffled.

“Just that you really have no room to stand if you’re going to talk about how lewd someone’s outfit is,” Cattleya answered primly, folding her hands in front of her and smiling.

“I  _ guess, _ ” Zeruel groaned. “Hey, when are we going to go after the giant robots?”

Cattleya hummed. “I don’t know. Are you going to throw any more of them into various underground villages, prompting unheavals of highly disruptive nature and forcing people to the surface again?”

“That was an accident!” Zeruel whined, pouting at Cattleya and crossing her arms. “And no I am  _ not _ going to do that! Besides, it’s not like any more of them are gonna come after us righ-”

And then with an almighty crash, a giant robot crash landed in the desert right outside of the village.

“... Don’t. Say. A word.” Zeruel hissed.

“I said not a thing~!” Cattleya sing-songed. “Do you think this one might be stronger than the other one~?”

“Considering it’s made of cheap garbage and it’s of the same mass produced design as the other three? Probably not,” Zeruel sighed, grumbling quietly as she hopped out of the window and started meandering towards where the robot was now causing a ruckus as it stomped towards the village. “Could you be a doll and defend the people for me? I don’t wanna have to put out more than the bare minimum of effort to put down a mass produced military  _ junker _ .”

“Try not to throw this one into a village too~!” Cattleya sing-songed again, before taking off back towards Littner.

“She’s  _ never _ gonna let me live that down is she?” Zeruel sighed, stuffing her hands in her pockets and sauntering out into the desert sands, yawning quietly as she took one look at the robot- and blinked.

The robot immediately collapsed into a fountain of parts and gore (from the pilot) as her hair coiled back into its proper place, the sharp whip-cracks of sonic booms echoing out moments later as a fierce wind kicked up from the sheer  _ force _ of her combat ribbons extending at hypersonic speeds.

“Job’s done,” Zeruel called out, sauntering back into the village with a quiet shrug, while the expedition party over in the pit peeked over the rim again and made a beeline towards the pile of parts and junk.

“...when can I learn to do that?” Yoko asked from right next to Cattleya.

“I thought you were out on that expedition,” Cattleya very much did not yelp, turning to face Yoko and folding her hands primly in front of her. “And… I doubt your abilities will manifest like Zeruel’s, given that you two have very much different soul patterns and personalities.”

"But I'm going to  _ get  _ something like that?" Yoko questioned. "I would  _ love  _ to punch a giant metal machine to death!" 

“Well, yes, but to be honest, destroying mechs like that is honestly the  _ least _ of what most Angels are capable of- even Ireul could take them apart in her true form and she’s easily the least combat focused Angel out of all of us,” Cattleya answered, shrugging a bit as the two of them idly watched Zeruel haul back the various junk that she’d made over the last few days, bringing back as much scrap and parts as she could- as well as a surprising amount of weapons from the crater that used to be the village.

“So what do you think I’m capable of?” Yoko asked curiously.

“At the moment, I have no clue,” Cattleya shrugged again, shaking her head slowly before sighing. “It could be anything, really, it’s all based on what your concept is.”

“...And what’s my  _ concept? _ ” Yoko drawled, starting to get tired of the lack of straight answers.

“Reach into your soul and find out,” Cattleya answered primly, then tilted her head and paused. “Actually it’s not that hard to find out. Something about fractal spirals and… infinite… generation… capacity… Oh my.”

“Congratulations,” Zeruel drawled, popping up from... somewhere. “You’ve singlehandedly topped about 90% of the Family by embodying the concept of Spirals. Go you.”

“... I don’t know what any of that means,” Yoko admitted immediately, before poking at the spiral tattoo on her breast. “Does that have something to do with this tattoo on my boob?”

“We as a species draw our power from infinitely rotating fractal spirals,” Cattleya explained patiently. “Somehow, you managed to embody the very Concept - which means that your specialization is basically jackpot when it comes to both power and output.”

“... So does that mean like… I can punch really hard now?” Yoko asked, clearly clueless about what she could actually do with that much power. “I feel like this is like… the really sciency kinda stuff that Leeron would go for.”

“One of you finally attains ultimate power,” Cattleya muttered, “and they’re exactly like my Familiar. I’m starting to understand Louise’s frustration.”

“Well, to be fair, she literally did live under a rock until literally yesterday,” Zeruel pointed out idly, shrugging a bit as Yoko continued poking her boob until she started glowing green again.

And then she started flickering like a lightbulb, the green glow flaring and dissipating with every press of her boob tattoo as she giggled with all the same kind of amusement as an easily entertained toddler slapping a light switch.

Cattleya rolled her eyes and rose, walking to the edge of the canyon. She looked up at the massive walls, tilting her head.

“What are you thinking, miss Cattleya?” Dayakka asked, coming to a stop next to her a few minutes later. “You seem deep in thought.”

“I like to play around with Earth Magic sometimes,” Cattleya answered, distracted. “Do you think your people would mind if I... decorated a little?”

Dayakka hummed. “Not at all, miss Cattleya - unless of course you think you’ll disturb us?”

“I don’t know,” the mage murmured. “I suppose I will simply have to start small...”

<>

“HA!”

“HYA!”

“WATAAAAAAAH!”

“SHWAAAA!”

“SEIYAAAA!!!!”

“ORYAAAAA!!!”

“ORA ORA ORA!”

“Is it working!?”

“Not in the slightest,” Zeruel deadpanned, taking in the lush river area they were in and noting the complete lack of craters, holes, or otherwise destroyed bits of land around them. Other than that single boulder she’d blown into slag with her laser eyes a few moments ago to give Yoko an example. “Somehow it seems like whatever energy you’re generating, it likes either not being used for laser eyes, or you need to channel it through something first.”

“Well that’s a bummer,” Yoko complained. “...any ideas?”

“Didn’t you retrieve a really big gun from that stockpile the other day?” Zeruel mentioned, waving in the general direction of New Littner where they could still vaguely see Leeron’s workshop hard at work integrating the Ganmen (apparently that’s what those ugly face robots were called) parts and retrieved weapons into the town’s defenses- mostly in the form of turret towers and blast shields, while everyone else was allowed access to at least one reverse engineered handheld gun. “You could use that.”

Yoko turned her head to stare at Zeruel, and the Angel could  _ swear _ the girl had stars in her eyes. “You can  _ do _ that? Channel your soul though a gun?”

“Probably?” Zeruel shrugged, not really knowing the answer for rather obvious reasons. “If anyone would know for sure it’s probably Ireul, but she’s off solving an energy crisis right now in another dimension.”

“I wanna try it,” Yoko declared, rushing off to get her gun and speeding right back to the practice area. “Okay, what do I do now?”

“I have no clue,” Zeruel deadpanned, shrugging and sitting down in midair while Yoko pouted. “Look kid, I’m a melee fighter and all my attacks are either me hitting shit real hard, or blasting things with my laser eyes. I dunno  _ why _ you don’t even have Angel standard laser eyes, but if you just reach deep down in that feeling you have in your chest, I’m sure you’ll be able to do…  _ something _ .”

Yoko huffed. Then, she lifted the gun and took aim at a far-away rock formation.

The girl began to glow a faint green.

“Huh. I think it’s work- HOLY SHIT!” Zeruel immediately fell over as Yoko fired, unleashing a massive beam comparable to one of  _ her own _ eyeblasts from the barrel of the gun. Seconds later, the far wall of the canyon  _ exploded _ into a massive burst of spiraling light, then proceeded to explode again. Several times over.

Yoko, meanwhile, was left with a completely slagged gun half melted to her hands. “Aw man,” she complained. “I need a stronger gun!”

“Or, you could control your shot output better,” Cattleya spoke up as she walked over, primly stepping along the water’s surface with Leeron in her arms. “Leeron, could you possibly enhance Yoko’s… well. I say enhance, but I really mean re-engineer from scratch- could you possibly fix up her gun and make it worthy of an Angelic weapon?”

“Perhaps,” Leeron agreed. “Give her here, then - what have you done to it already!?”

“Apparently guns aren’t meant to handle the full output of the Angelic soul,” Zeruel deadpanned, watching as Leeron fretted over the slagged mess of metal in her hands, alternating between wanting to tear his hair out and shouting at Yoko for ‘destroying a piece of ancient history with your carelessness! Do you have any idea of how much time it’s going to take to re-reverse engineer this thing into being usable again!?’ or something like that.

“I could have told you that,” Cattleya deadpanned. “Also, Dayakka won’t let me shape giant statues into the foot of the canyon.”

“Yeah I think that’s a little bit much,” Zeruel muttered, while Leeron picked up Yoko by her scarf- somehow- and dragged her back towards Littner to rebuild her gun to much higher specifications. “... Somehow I get the feeling she’s gonna go through a  _ lot _ of guns.”

Cattleya hummed. “And how do you feel, my Familiar?”

“Like maybe we should have picked a different point in the timeline to actually start doing stuff,” Zeruel deadpanned, sighing a bit. “I have no idea what Zeru was thinking wanting to come to this place- the only thing to fight is shitty robots and none of them are worth the scrap metal I turn them into.”

“I’m not sure,” Cattleya confessed. “Why did you want to go to the other place?”

“Thought that I’d be able to fight planet destroying fighters on semi-equal terms, but now that I think about it- they didn’t start showing up for a while either now did they?” Zeruel shrugged, folding her hands behind her head as she strolled back towards Littner. “But I guess Yoko proved that having infinite output energy is entirely possible here.”

“Then perhaps your twin wanted to come here for much of similar reasons,” Cattleya reasoned. “Although if you ask me, both of you could do with some... patience.”

“I spent three hundred years in a death coma, patience is overrated,” Zeruel pouted, sticking her tongue out at Cattleya, who simply responded with an indulgent smile. “Bleh. At this point I’ve half a mind to just take a walk in 5D and skip to the good part!”

"Because that's  _ clearly  _ how stories work," Cattleya snarked. 

“It is when we’re multidimensional eldritch beings capable of time traveling should we stop pretending that we’re even remotely human,” Zeruel deadpanned. “Then again, we’d kinda be abandoning Yoko for a few months if we did that… eugh, fine, I’ll just have to- eurgh… be  _ patient. _ I guess.”

“You’re getting  _ attached~ _ ” Cattleya singsonged. “Oh, I am so proud~ of you!”

“I am  _ not!” _ Zeruel immediately squeaked, glaring at her Master with a light blush. “I just don’t wanna abandon a newborn Angel at the first sign of boredom!”

“You  _ are! _ ” Cattleya giggled. “You’re  _ blushing _ and everything!”

“No I’m noooooootttttt!!!!!” Zeruel whined, covering her face and running away from her Master, theatrically throwing her hands in the air and making an entire production of it.

“What a dork,” Cattleya sighed, giggling a bit more before slowly following after her wayward Familiar.


	4. Hunt

“I wanna go  _ hunting! _ ”

“You want to what,” Zeruel deadpanned.

“Hunting?” Yoko asked, pointing off at the marshy grasslands they’d been practicing in the other day, one hand on the custom sunglasses she’d gotten from Leeron and the other wrapped around the massive sniper rifle that she’d finally figured out how to shoot without blowing up. “The village is running low on meat stores and the mole pigs aren’t ready for slaughter yet. Happens every year, really, but this time we have a place to go get more food right there.”

“...right,” Zeruel muttered. “Hunting for  _ animals. _ Not giant robots. Okay sure, go nuts.”

“You wanna come with?” Yoko hopped to her feet and off of the crate she’d been sitting on, looking over at Zeruel and tilting her head. “It’d be nice to have a bit of company- Leeron also wants me to check the snares that some of the others in the village put up. Maybe they’ll have caught something already.”

Zeruel considered that. “...Yeah, sure. I’ve got nothing better to do, anyway.”

“Great! There’s a bunch of weird stuff out there that I wanna try eating, and I got Leeron to fix up my gun to use arrows!” Yoko flounced off, motioning for Zeruel to follow as she strode off towards the back of the canyon towards the waterways. 

“How did  _ I _ become a responsible one?” Zeruel asked nobody in particular.

“By becoming a big sister,” Cattleya responded as she walked past, patting Zeruel on the shoulder and chuckling. “Now go on, Zeruel. Go watch over your baby sister.”

“I  _ dislike _ you,” Zeruel hissed without any real heat and stalked after Yoko, leaving Cattleya behind to chuckle at her Familiar.

“It’ll do her some good,” the Mage mused.

“C’mon, hurry up! We’re burning daylight!” Yoko called out, already halfway down the canyon and waving at Zeruel. “What’s taking so long?”

“Aren’t most animals nocturnal?” Zeruel shot back. “Shouldn’t we be hunting them at night, then?”

“There’s plenty of them just wandering around right now,” Yoko retorted, pointing out at the myriad of animals already visible just from where they were- the grape hippo things, squirrel birds flying around, etc etc.

"Seriously," the Angel grumbled, "who had the bright idea to start  _ combining  _ animals?" 

“I dunno, they look pretty normal to me,” Yoko deadpanned, leading Zeruel along through the winding canyon, all the way up to a rocky outcropping with a wonderful view of the waterways. “Meat, meat, and… well, more meat.”

“Not much for actual hunting, innit?” the Angel shot back. “Literally all we need to watch out for is not to vaporize anything beyond edibility, and we’re golden. God I want an actual fight.”

“The challenge isn’t in killing, the challenge is in regulating force,” Yoko recited blandly, taking cover behind a tall thicket of grass and aiming with her rifle. “And, y’know, not making every animal run away by making a huge mess. Something tells me that what Leeron said to me applies to you too.”

“I’m not going to hunt an animal with  _ lasers, _ ” Zeruel scoffed. “I’mma use my  _ bare hands _ like a  _ normal person! _ ”

“.... Normal people don’t hunt animals with their bare hands, Zeruel,” Yoko deadpanned, rolling her eyes as she cocked her rifle and slid an arrow into the chamber in lieu of a bullet. “They use arrows or bullets that can’t blow up a mid sized boulder.”

“Normal people are  _ weird, _ ” the Angel declared. “What’s wrong with using your hands? I’ve seen people do it!”

“Yeah well those people aren’t here now are they?” Yoko sighed, shaking her head and taking aim before firing off a quick pair of shots, her rifle letting out a soft puff of noise compared to its usually deafening thunder cracks with each shot. In the distance, two grape hippos keeled over from the new arrows embedded in their foreheads.

Zeruel picked up a small pebble. She inspected it. Tested its weight. And threw it at a nearby animal.

Said animal immediately exploded into a shower of gore.

“... Whoops,” Zeruel muttered. 

“... See, this is why I use arrows and a gun,” Yoko deadpanned. “Y’know, so I don’t go wasting valuable meat.”

“...yeah I have no idea what I’m actually doing,” Zeruel confessed. “Sue me.”

“That much was evident,” Yoko rolled her eyes again, huffing before sinking a few more arrows into a few more hapless animals before hopping to her feet with a small whoop. “Alright, that’s enough for now, let’s get these back to Littner!”

“I did nothing,” Zeruel complained.

“We can go fight giant robots later,” Yoko sighed, patting Zeruel’s head and huffing. “... Actually come to think of it, I’m pretty sure that speck on the horizon is another one… two… three… four?”

Zeruel perked up. “Oooh! Can we, Yoko? Can we?”

Yoko raised an eyebrow, staring at Zeruel for a moment before shrugging and swapping out her cartridge of arrows for a magazine full of armor piercing rounds. “Fine, I guess. Just don’t let them get too close to the village.”

Zeruel cracked her knuckles. “Awright! Come at me, bitches~!”

With a loud whoop, Zeruel  _ launched _ herself at the approaching mechs, laughing wildly as she turned her entire body into a projectile using her AT Field, whilst Yoko just rolled her eyes, took aim with her rifle, and sent two shots streaking across the sky… directly into the thrusters of the robot on the far left, sending it crashing to the ground in a heap of crumpled metal and parts.

The Angel, naturally, took pleasure in ripping off the robots’ heads - well, hats - and hanging them onto her belt as trophies.

Not that they really  _ fit _ in her human form, but that was mostly semantics.

“... You know Leeron is going to get all mad about you wrecking more parts than you needed to, right?” Yoko deadpanned as she made her way over to the wreckage, huffing as she took in the broken scrap that was the three gunmen Zeruel had destroyed, compared to the mostly intact one that she’d taken out. “We kinda needed their weapon systems in one piece for the village.”

“ _ I’m _ a weapons system!” Zeruel retorted, crossing her arms and pouting.

“Great, then I suppose you wouldn’t mind getting mounted to a turret staring out at an empty desert for the rest of your life, would you?” Yoko rolled her eyes at Zeruel, not at all impressed with her whining.

“Stop making sense why don’t you,” the Angel grumbled.

“Pretty sure that’s your job,” Yoko snickered, then simply turned around and flounced back towards town, stuffing her catches into a net so she could drag that back with her. “C’mon, let’s get back to town, we need at  _ least _ a pallet or two to get these back.”

Zeruel just crossed her arms and pouted.   
  
<>

“D’you think the amount of attacks recently is escalating?” Zeruel asked idly one day, after finally hauling in the last of the gunmen that had crashed into the village defenses and been summarily taken apart. “Cuz it feels like there’s more and more every day.”

“... Eh, I’m sure it’s nothing important,” Yoko answered, adjusting her scope and frowning. “Ah shit, I think one of ‘em exploded real close to where Cattleya said that other village was- if we’re not careful with that area from now on, we might destabilize it and cause a cave-in… We might need to convince Dayakka to evacuate them before too long.”

The Angel hummed. “I kinda wanna force the issue,” she admitted. “Nothing’s been any kind of  _ challenging _ lately...”

“Let’s not,” Yoko retorted, packing up her rifle and rolling her shoulders- she’d recently managed to start channeling her energy more effectively, resulting in her completely switching from enhanced bullets to just straight up firing laser beams out of her rifle. So much more useful, especially when she’d finally figured out how to twist her AT Field just right and make her shots curve in midair. “The last thing we need is for you to bring an entire army down on our heads. Maybe you’d be fine, but Littner’d probably get exploded before you could do anything about it.”

“Spoilsport,” Zeruel grumbled.

“Just making sure you don’t accidentally kill everyone I know and love,” Yoko deadpanned. “Now c’mon, you know the drill. Let’s haul that scrap back before it gets too buried in the sand.”

“You know what, screw it,” Zeruel declared. “I’mma change the scene, and there better be something interesting happening. Got it?

<>!”

“Simon! Don’t give up! Remember, your drill is the drill that can do anything, even pierce the heavens!” 

“... I don’t think that really applies right now, bro!”

“Nonsense! Just kick logic to the curb and-”

“WILL BOTH OF YOU JUST SHUT UP AND DIE ALREADY!?”

“... Should um… should we intervene?” Yoko stared down into the pit where a tiny gunmen bearing a blue haired young man and a darker haired teenager ran around frantically, dodging wild swipes from the bull headed gunmen that had fallen into said pit village after Zeruel had kicked it directly in the face and sent it on a ballistic arc into- well, where it was now. “Also, I fucking  _ told you _ this would happen. And did you listen? Noooo! And now we gotta clean up this mess!”

“Mess?” Zeruel responded, grinning. “I’m having  _ fun _ here!”

“Yeah, sure, and  _ they _ are not,” Yoko sighed, pointing down at the hapless villagers rushing to evacuate to the lower tunnels of Giha before unslinging her rifle from her back and loading in a magazine of normal rifle rounds. “Just my luck that I’m out of my normal armor piercing rounds today too…”

“I thought you were infusing them?” Zeruel asked. “What happened to that?”

“If I infuse bullets with my energy, they start breaking more stuff than Leeron can fix,” Yoko explained patiently, then unslung a coil of rope that she’d pulled from the hammer space conveniently located between her boobs and unfurled it down into the pit. “Anyway, hold this while I go save those two idiots.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Zeruel grumbled. “Don’t hurt yourself. Actually, no, do hurt yourself.”

“You wish,” Yoko snorted, then immediately swung down into the pit to initiate her dramatic rescue of the two idiots running around in a mini-mech… only to get swept up into said mini-mech and-

“... Is that a drill?” Zeruel muttered, watching mutely as the tiny little red robot suddenly blasted off like a rocket, spouted drills from a number of improbable places, and completely  _ demolished _ the bigger gunmen in mere seconds as its flight path threw it high up into the air. “... Something tells me that spirals are gonna be a big part of this by the end.”

Parts of the big gunmen rained down around her as she shrugged and walked towards the commotion. “You done, Yoko?” she yelled, just in case.

A few moments later, the crimson mini-mech crashed down in front of Zeruel, leaving everyone inside rather dazed- well, just the two boys. Yoko was pretty alright.

“Yeah, we’re done,” Yoko nodded, then looked around and sighed. “Damn, and I was hoping we’d get some  _ intact _ parts out of this one…”

Zeruel raised an eyebrow.

Then she glanced at the tiny thing probably secretly full of drills. “I think we have something cool anyway,” she deadpanned.


	5. Protagonists

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops! Forgot that this thing actually still had a backlog. Here, have several chapters, as a treat!

It turned out that the big blue haired idiot was named Kamina. Yoko seemed smitten with him, in that sort of adorable teen crush kind of way. Zeruel had to admit- for a dude, he did look pretty good.

Shame he was such a loud dumbass.

His little brother, though…

Well, Simon was mostly just adorable, in the kind of shy puppy kind of way.

Shame about the lack of spine, though.

If he  _ had _ a spine, Zeruel would have considered him worthy of adoption into the family, what with the barely restrained power she could feel pulsing beneath the boy’s skin.

Well, then again, some of the others had adopted even more loser-ish people.

*cough* Ikari *cough*

...Then again, Ikari did clean up nicely these days…

But that was beside the point. 

The point of which was…

Uh…

Hm.

Zeruel shrugged and went back to watching Kamina and Simon interacting with the rest of Littner, goofing around and doing generally stupid things- especially yelling about how apparently they “told everyone in Giha so” and “that they were totally right all along”.

Not that Zeruel really cared.

“So what’s up with the enormous well of potential in you?”

Thankfully, she still had none of the subtlety.

“E-eh? W-what potential?” Simon immediately stuttered out, staring up at Zeruel with some kind of combination of embarrassment and terror, clearly intimidated by her height even whilst staring at her… assets. “I don’t know what you’re talking about?”

“Clearly not the potential to be a pervert,” Zeruel snarked. “Nah, you have this frankly ridiculous wellspring of power hidden within you, and I wanna know if you know anything about it.” She leaned forward. “Well?”

“Zeruel!”

The Angel flinched, withdrawing from the somewhat disapproving ire of her Master, who was staring at them with her arms crossed. “Stop picking on kids, would you?”

“I’m not!” Zeruel whined, turning to face Cattleya whilst Simon scurried away, stamping her foot irritably and huffing. “The kid’s just got some weird shit going on with him and I wanted to know what it was!”

“Does ‘the kid’ even know what it is?” Cattleya deadpanned.

“That’s what I was just asking him about!” Zeruel continued whining, grumbling irritably at Cattleya and crossing her arms. 

“Hey!”

Mage and Familiar both looked towards the sudden shout, as Kamina came marching towards them, a frown on his face. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, picking on my little bro like that!?”

Cattleya raised an eyebrow. “Go on, Zeruel,” she prodded, “Tell him what the hell do you think you’re doing.”

“I uhhhhhhh- Er… uhhh…” Zeruel looked around awkwardly, quailing under the combined stares of the surprisingly intimidating blue haired dumbass and her rather severe looking Master. “<>...?”

“That’s not going to work here,” Cattleya deadpanned, cutting through Zeruel’s attempts to change the scene and pointing at Kamina, who mostly just seemed confused at the sound Zeruel just made. “Just give him an explanation already, would you?”

“I just wanted to know what was up with that Potential he had rattling around inside him!” Zeruel protested. “With you I can chalk it up on Protagonist Syndrome, but it’s hardly even balanced with him and I have no clue what’s up with that!”

“You’re talking a lotta words that ain’t makin’ sense, missy!” Kamina shot back, his voice boisterously loud even at his “normal” volume and his cape somehow billowing despite the lack of wind in the canyon. “Say it again in normal people words, would ya?”

Cattleya snickered at Zeruel’s befuddled expression. “Just explain it like you would to Cho,” she suggested, something twinkling in her eyes.

“Ugghh, fiiiine,” Zeruel groaned, then turned back to Kamina and sighed. “Your bro is potentially super powerful for some reason and I don’t know why. Also, so is that tiny mole he’s got.”

“Boota?” Kamina muttered to himself, confused for a second before perking up. “And of course my little bro is powerful! He’s the little brother of the great Kamina after all! Leader of Team Gurren! It’s only natural that Simon would take after me!”

Zeruel blinked. Long, and slow. “...You doing anything later?”

“Ah- uh?” Kamina immediately stopped and blinked, raising an eyebrow at Zeruel for a moment. “Nah, not really? You asking me on a date or somethin’?”

Cattleya burst out laughing. “I’ll leave you two alone,” she suggested through the giggles, and fled, an occasional snort trailing behind her.

<>

“Soooo,” Yoko murmured, taking in the tiny robot that seemed to be so much more powerful than it initially appeared. “Y’think the weird green energy coming outta my boobs sometimes is related to the big green spiral power meter in this thing?”

Leeron shrugged. “Could be~ We probably won’t know unless we do some tests.”

“...I’m gonna jump into this thing,” Yoko decided.

“Yoko, no.”

“Yoko, yes!”

Without another thought as to her own safety or proper scientific procedure, Yoko vaulted over the rim of the tiny mech dubbed Lagann and settled into the seat, wiggling about for a second before grabbing the handles and-

Nothing.

“Eh?” Yoko tugged at the control yokes of the mecha a few times in confusion, listening to the quiet clicking of gears and joints before pouting. “Dang it, it doesn’t work!”

“Have you tried activating it?” Leeron deadpanned. “Try turning it off and on again.”

Yoko snorted, rolling her eyes as she hopped out of the Lagann. “Eugh, shut  _ up _ , Leeron! I probably need that weird drill necklace Simon wears around to actually turn it on- just my luck he’s out hunting right now… I should be out there too, dammit, I’m so bored!”

"Are you going to let me work now?" Leeron deadpanned. "These robots won't fix themselves." 

“Yeah yeah, I’m going, I’m going,” Yoko snarked, clambering out of Lagann and pouting a bit as she walked away. “I’m gonna go blow stuff up!”

"Have fun," Leeron murmured, turning back to the mecha. 

<>

“Y’know, I shouldn’t really be surprised about the fact that the  _ one _ time Yoko and I are busy hunting further away from the village, we end up missing all the action,” Zeruel sighed, looking out over the field of wreckage that had once been three military gunmen and a bright crimson commander type, said commander type holding Lagann in one hand like a trophy while Simon and Kamina tried very hard to figure out how they were going to get the fourteen year old down from the wrecked bot’s hand.

“How did he manage to  _ steal _ a Gunmen?” Yoko muttered, scratching her head awkwardly. “Those are supposed to be gene locked to Beastmen…”

"Sheer Protagonist Shenaniganry," Zeruel deadpanned. "Now shall we actually go see what we've  _ got?"  _

“Yeah yeah, I’m coming,” Yoko rolled her eyes and strode forth, sighing quietly as she approached Simon and Kamina, who at this point were now shouting at each other as one idiot clambered out and shouted for the other to jump down into his arms.

Zeruel just rolled her eyes and raised her voice. “ **_Oi!_ ** You two! What the hell happened here? Anyone? Hallo!”

“We kicked ass and got a sweet robot outta it!” Kamina called back boisterously, laughing uproariously as his newly acquired cape flapped around in the wind. “And I got a cape!”

“...I like the cape,” Zeruel admitted. “Whose ass did you kick, and were they any good?”

“Just some beastmen bastards who thought they could muscle in on our turf!” Kamina boasted, crossing his arms over his chest and laughing again. “They didn’t stand a chance once I managed to steal the Gurren over here!”

Zeruel let her eyes glide over it, nodding. “Im-pressive,” she drawled. “Is that a hole in its head?”

“Heh, ugly bastards managed to get a lucky hit,” Kamina winced a little and rubbed his shoulder, a few flakes of dried blood falling from where a stray bullet had just barely missed his arm. “But they were no match for the Lagann Impact! Right Simon?”

“Right, big bro!” Simon enthused. Zeruel snickered, ruffling his hair.

“Attaboy.”

“.... Huh, y’know actually- that raises kind of a question…” Yoko muttered, looking up at the newly renamed Gurren while scratching her head. “Do higher ranking Beastmen get custom paintjobs or something? Because most of the Gunmen we’ve had to deal with are like… a really dull green or blue or even just brown, but this one’s bright red and gold and has cool swords.”

“Makes as much sense as anything,” Kamina shrugged. “But hey, who cares? We kicked  _ ass! _ ”

“So you did… so what’re you gonna do with that busted up mech anyway? There’s not enough left of the original limbs to repair it so…” Yoko looked between where Gurren half-sunk into the sand, then to where its limb pieces were strewn about. “... Gonna need a lotta parts to get it back to working condition, gotta say.”

“...I’m gonna ride it, of course,” Kamina declared, as if it was obvious.

“... No shit, dumbass, but how are you gonna fix it? I doubt half the scraps around here are even worth bringing back, even to melt down and repurpose,” Yoko grumbled, rolling her eyes as she looked around, frowning. “Damn, how  _ did  _ you make this much of a mess? Not even Zeruel completely dismantles bots like this anymore.”

“Lagann Impact!” Kamina stated boisterously. Again. As if that actually explained anything.

“He threw Lagann and it turned into a big drill and… the enemies exploded.” Simon answered, explaining it slightly better than Kamina. “Lagann has a lot of drills.”

“That makes no fucking sense,” Yoko declared, just as Zeruel scratched the back of her head and noted “Makes sense”.

Narrowing her eyes, Yoko glared at her fellow Angel. “Excuse me?”

“It’s doing something fucky to the local spacetime,” Zeruel explained as if it was obvious. “Infinitely repeating spirals tend to do that. Simple enough.”

“... It is?” Yoko blinked as her boob tattoo pulsed once, making Lagann’s eyes light up for a fraction of a second as she almost unconsciously did a scan of the local area. “... Huh. So it is. That’s… weird to look at, dang.”

“...Is that a  _ glowing boob tattoo? _ ” Kamina asked incredulously, in an almost awed voice.

“Yeah it does that sometimes,” Yoko responded casually, waving off Kamina’s questions as she clambered up the wreckage that was once a fully functioning Gunmen and was now mostly a decorative red statue with one intact limb. “Hey Simon, throw me that lil drill thing would ya? I wanna try something!”

The two brothers exchanged glances.

“....Sure,” Simon said slowly. He fished his necklace out of his shirt, but hesitated. “Wait, is that a good idea?”

“No,” Zeruel, Kamina  _ and _ Yoko deadpanned in chorus.

“Do it anyway,” Zeruel suggested.

“... I think maybe we should save it for when Lagann is back on the ground then,” Simon decided, then paused. “... How are we getting it down, though…?”

Zeruel's hair unfurled. "I can help," she suggested with an entirely too big grin. "It shouldn't even be damaged! Much." 

“Oi! Don’t go swinging those around while I’m in the damn mech!” Yoko shouted down from within Lagann’s cockpit, wiggling around a bit to try and dodge whatever Zeruel would throw at her… only to let out a shriek of surprise as the Gurren’s arm servos abruptly failed and the hand opened… dropping Lagann to the ground with a thunderous crash.

“... Hey, it’s down!” Zeruel cheered, letting her hair curl back up with a smug grin. “And I didn’t even have to do anything.”

“All of my HATE!” was Yoko’s contribution.

“Oh get over it, you’re  _ fine _ ,” Zeruel snickered, watching as Yoko tried her damndest to pull herself out from where she’d been all but planted into the sand like a potato, one arm twisting around to give Zeruel a very pointed and indignant middle finger.

“Zeruel, don’t push your sister around,” Cattleya scolded from... somewhere.

“Hmph, fiiiine,” Zeruel huffed, then unceremoniously uprooted Yoko in a shower of dirt. “There, you’re out now.”

“Fuck you,” Yoko grumbled, spitting dirt out of her mouth and wiping herself off as best as she could manage. 

"Fuck me yourself, you coward," Zeruel shot right back, grinning. 

“So um… why did you need the drill?” Simon cut in awkwardly, holding out the small drill in his hand as he watched Yoko flip Lagann back onto its feet, the robot somehow managing to maintain its upright position despite the fact that it normally would be considered horribly balanced. 

“I’m gonna plug it into my boobs and see what happens,” Yoko deadpanned. “No, I’m gonna do the robot thing of course!”

“.... Well alright?” Simon muttered, watching as Yoko clambered back into Lagann and plugged the core drill into the appropriate slot and-

“HOLY SHIT!” Zeruel screamed, instantly dragging Simon and Kamina back as a  _ massive _ fountain of emerald green energy erupted around the Lagann, the mech shooting off into the air as drills emerged from every surface only to combine down into a much larger drill on the bottom of the robot.

It slammed down moments later, directly into the top of Gurren.

Tendrils and cabling flew out, circuits sizzled and metal warped. 

The universe  _ clicked _ .

Where once there was the inert form of Gurren with Lagann impaled into its head, there now stood a shining new mecha with two faces, an almost samurai-like figure with a crescent horned helmet, great shoulder pads, and… pointy sunglasses over the eyes of the face on its torso.

Huh.

“Huh.” Zeruel deadpanned.

“...  _ Huh _ ,” Yoko mumbled.

“Huh?” Simon squeaked out.

“WHAT THE FUCK!?” Kamina exclaimed.

And then Lagann’s heretofore unseen ejector seat activated and booted Yoko right out.

“There you go,” a completely unfazed Cattleya pointed out, leaning against a convenient rocky outcrop, “It’s activated.”

“... It’s… certainly something,” Zeruel nodded, looking up at the mech while Yoko picked herself off the ground for the second time in less than five minutes, spitting dirt and sand and more than a few inventive curses.

"This is the  _ last time  _ I listen to my instincts!" Yoko snarled. 

"No it isn't," Zeruel shot back. 

"...No it isn't," Yoko agreed, slumping. 


	6. Road Trip

The universe felt… tense.

It didn’t usually feel tense, but it felt like it was rearing back to kick off some kind of plotline now that Zeruel really thought about it. Something kind of like… well, with the advent of Gurren Lagann’s creation and subsequent de-combination after Simon and Kamina got bored of driving laps around Littner, it felt almost like something  _ big  _ was about to happen.

_ But what _ .

It was with that thought that Zeruel wandered over to Cattleya, only to find her Master-

"Are you playing videogames?" 

"Sure am," the woman replied easily. "I'm almost at the upcoming midboss, was there something you needed?" 

“Nah, me n’ Yoko were about to go join the boys out in the wetlands- they were going hunting, last I remember, but we could always use more meat with how much all the Giha refugees eat…” Zeruel shuddered a bit, wondering internally how the  _ fuck _ none of the Giha residents had died yet considering their diet consisted almost entirely of meat and maybe a few special strains of cave crops for flavoring. 

“Have fun,” Cattleya suggested. “Try not to get run over by your own midboss while you’re at it.”

“Nah, I’ll be fiiiii-”

<>

“-IIIIIGAAAAAA! DORIRUUUU! BREAAAAAAAAAAAAKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“Holy  _ shitballs, _ ” Zeruel muttered, standing awkwardly on a cliffside with Yoko as Simon and Kamina completely wrecked the shit out of the most humanoid looking Gunmen yet, finishing it off with a magnificent final attack…

That  _ missed. _

“D-damn you!” the beastman inside said Gunmen screeched, the robot itself limping away with half a working leg, the left half of its torso completely missing, and the plasma cannon mounted on its head completely shredded into scrap. “I’ll kill you for this!”

“Hah! We’ll see about that!” Kamina announced boisterously, the crimson form of Gurren Lagann crossing its arms imperiously as the blue haired man laughed victoriously, watching the Beastman limp away to fight another day. “That’s right! Run for it ya beastman bastard! And don’t come back!”

There was a pause.

“...Why does all the cool shit keep happening when I’m  _ out hunting!? _ ” Zeruel exploded.

“Because I don’t think we’re quite relevant to the plot yet,” Yoko mentioned idly, cleaning her rifle as Simon and Kamina did some kind of goofy victory dance in their mechs. “Hmm… something’s telling me that you’re not gonna get a serious challenge for… a  _ while _ .”

There was a pause. 

"...I  _ hate  _ you," Zeruel muttered viciously. 

“Call it payback for making me look like an idiot yesterday,” Yoko deadpanned. “Now are we gonna haul back our catch now or are we gonna let the village starve?”

“On it,” Zeruel grumbled. She picked up the haul and started marching.

“Oh don’t be such a grumpy-puss,” Yoko snickered, walking alongside Zeruel with her own set of kills securely tied down to a small sled. “You still got to kill stuff today anyway, so at least there’s that- and it’s not like you had much in the way of challenges anyway, so why bother getting in a twist about it?”

"Because I can  _ tell  _ that the plot has kicked off, and I won't be able to fight  _ any  _ of the big wigs when I'm off hunting," Zeruel grumbled. "This sucks! I came here for a  _ fight  _ in the first place!" 

“Well,” Yoko started, holding up one hand idly as she flicked down her sunglasses-

<>

“We’re gonna have plenty of fights on the road,” she finished, three days and one timeskip later, with a bag over her shoulder and a heavy container full of supplies attached to the back of Gurren Lagann.

“... Did you just-” Zeruel looked around awkwardly, scratching her head as causality reasserted itself. “... Right. Yeah. Alright. Sure. Let’s go.”

"You're not the only one who can violate causality like that, Big Sis," Yoko teased. "What, did you think you were the only one? You didn't even invent it!" 

“... I mean, I didn’t think you could do it without actually  _ pronouncing _ it,” Zeruel muttered, still looking about in confusion as she prodded the walls of reality with her soul. “It’s really,  _ really _ weird feeling it done in the middle of a narrative sentence rather than a line of dialogue…”

“Guess I’m just that awesome,” Yoko teased.

“... Sure, let’s go with that,” Zeruel rolled her eyes fondly, sweeping her hand through Yoko’s hair and thoroughly mussing it up. “Now c’mon, weren’t we heading out on the road?”

“Yes we did,” Yoko grinned. “Onwards! To adventure! And not at all because Dayakka was completely fed up with Kamina and Simon!”

“Oh  _ that’s _ why he kicked us all out,” Zeruel muttered, snorting as she helped Yoko up the side of the big red robot, the two girls perching on top of the massive storage container now drilled firmly onto Gurren Lagann’s back, while Leeron sat inside said container instead so he could stay out of the heat. “... Well, me n’ the boys. I’m pretty sure Leeron was pretty essential for the village.”

“Leeron’s the chaperone,” Cattleya noted from on top of the robot’s shoulder. “And I’m also here.”

“Wait, why are you tagging along? I thought you liked hanging around Littner?” Zeruel asked, raising her eyebrow at Cattleya. “Don’t tell me you’re only coming along because you think we need a responsible adult or some bullshit like that.”

Cattleya raised her eyebrow.

“... Okay  _ fine, _ but I’m gonna complain the whole time!”

“This is why you need the responsible adult around,” Cattleya mentioned idly.

Zeruel spluttered. "S-stop trying to act responsible! Dammit, Catt, you're like the second biggest prankster in the Family!" 

"Remind me who's the first?" Cattleya asked idly. 

“I think that’s actually Israfel, come to think of it,” Zeruel muttered, scratching her head a bit. “I mean, I’d like to say it’s me, but it kinda feels like  _ everyone’s _ picked up trolling as a hobby these days.”

Cattleya hummed. "I think I was always a bit of a prankster," she mused. "Probably because Mother let me to get away with it... Oh, but look at me, digging up ancient history. What's the  _ plan?"  _

“Well, according to the boys, they’re taking the fight to the Beastmen so they stop attacking innocent people just for being on the surface,” Yoko mentioned idly, pulling a book out from between her boobs and flipping through it. “I figure they’ll need some help.”

"You'll finally get to punch robots again, my Familiar," Cattleya mused. "So why so  _ glum?"  _

“Because all the robots I punch are lame and shitty mass produced ones!” Zeruel huffed, crossing her arms and pouting. “None of them are worth the effort and I’m so boooooored!!!!”

Yoko snickered. "Wee~lll," she drawled, "If you're so  _ bored,  _ then why not fight  _ me?"  _

“Because I don’t want to hurt my baby sister,” Zeruel answered immediately. “Also, you’re used to human combat, not Angelic combat. Not exactly  _ equivalent _ , as it were.”

Yoko  _ sighed _ irritably. “Then, I dunno, go spar with the boys or something! You’re  _ bored, _ then  _ entertain yourself! _ ”

“Bah!” Zeruel continued whining uselessly, throwing her hands up in the air without a care. “I’ll alleviate my fight boredom when there’s actually things to seriously fight!”

“...Chicken,” Yoko deadpanned.

Zeruel snorted, raising a middle finger in Yoko’s direction. “Call me a chicken all you want, but I’m not dumb enough to go fight  _ all out _ in a spar. So I’m gonna wait until something can  _ make me _ go all out.”

Yoko threw up her hands. "Then  _ stop complaining  _ about being bored if you refuse to do anything about it! God! Is this what having siblings is  _ like!? _ " 

"Yes," Cattleya, Zeruel, Simon, and Kamina deadpanned in chorus, before staring at each other in momentary bemusement. 

“... Shut up,” Zeruel pouted.


	7. Black

_ “Would it have killed you lot to be something I can punch?!” _ Zeruel snarled to the Black Siblings, much to the exasperation of her travelling companions. 

“What’s wrong with her…?” Kiyal asked idly, faux whispering in Yoko’s direction after the misunderstanding had been cleared up… mostly.

Kittan and Kamina were still being…  _ boys _ … at each other. Which mostly involved a lot of shoving and subtly homoerotic posturing and boasting.

"She's antsy because she hasn't been in a fight for a long time, and because she's a stubborn bitch, she won't fight any 'lesser targets' either," Yoko drolled back. "Honestly.  _ Family."  _

“Family,” Kiyoh and Kinon nodded sagely, drawing an irate “Hey!” from Kiyal in response.

“Speaking of Family…” Zeruel muttered, idly checking the network and frowning as she shifted a few names around in her mind. “This branch of the family is lookin’ a little light… not as much as the prototype’s branch, but… hm. Hey, Black siblings! How would you like to join our lil family we got going on here? Something’s tellin’ me you lot are gonna be…  _ important _ … later on.”

The four exchanged glances. “...why does it sound like there’s a catch?” Kiyal asked cautiously.

“Well, you’ll have to deal with her for the rest of eternity,” Yoko deadpanned, rolling her eyes. “She adopted me and she hasn’t stopped being the single most annoying person I’ve ever met.”

“I do apologize for that,” Cattleya sighed as she finally made her way around the bend, having waited for the exact best moment to step in. “Zeruel is… excitable, to say the least. There aren’t very many catches to adoption, though I’m not certain if you all would enjoy potentially infinite power or if you would rather continue on normally.”

Kittan thought for a moment, before shrugging. “You know what, sure. Hit me up.”

“One adoption, coming right up!” Zeruel cheered, lobbing a core at Kittan, only to lose her balance mid throw and slice it… straight into Kittan’s crotch.

“EEEK!”

Fortunately for the now foaming at the mouth and twitching on the ground Black Brother, the Core did  _ not _ form where his family jewels would be, and instead took a standard place between his surprisingly well defined pecs.

That it also blew his shirt open as it formed was icing on the proverbial cake.

“Nice,” Yoko commented dryly, then sighed and shook her head. “Oi, girls, you want in on this?”

The Black Sisters winced as they watched Kittan groan on the ground, doubts forming in their minds… at least until the Core  _ sank into Kittan’s chest _ and was replaced by a spiral tattoo.

The same spiral tattoo that Yoko had on her boob, in fact. 

And then a massive pillar of glowing green energy exploded out of Kittan and shot into the sky like some kind of geyser of sheer shonen anime power. Fortunately for everyone’s eardrums, it only lasted a few seconds before Kittan was back on his feet and patting himself down in sheer, utter shock.

“I- what the-!? What the  _ fuck _ was that!?” Kittan almost shouted, continuing to pat himself down as if he expected some kind of weird tumor to form. “What the fucking shit was that!?”

“... I see where this is going,” Zeruel deadpanned.

“Oi! I want in on this!” Kamina declared, muscling his way into the scene.

“I was kinda wondering when you’d ask,” Yoko muttered, immediately pressing a Core into Kamina’s chest… with predictable results. Same pillar of green, same loud explosion, same spiral tattoo- though his seemed… less, somehow.

Odd, that.

“Oh damn, I feel great!” Kamina declared, flexing and posturing once the pillar had died down, grinning ear to ear as he felt out the new breadth of his power. “Like I’m on top of the world!”

“Along with the rest of us,” Yoko deadpanned. “Any other takers?”

“Us too!” The Black siblings called out, now thoroughly enthusiastic about gaining ultimate power.

“Ah, I guess me too?” Simon mentioned.

“... Right, great. Family ho!” Zeruel cheered, pressing cores into chests with a happy grin.

And then everything  _ exploded _ .

<>

Far away, in a pocket dimension on the other side of the universe, an ancient and unfathomably powerful being stirred in its slumber.

Something was wrong.

<>

“... Okay, I guess we know who the protagonist is now,” Zeruel deadpanned dryly, approximately five minutes later after Simon’s giant pillar of spiral energy had reached nearly thermonuclear levels of size and turned most of the canyon they’d been in into a glassed out, spiral patterned crater- thankfully, without injuring anyone or breaking anything important.

“... What. The  _ fuck _ was that!?” Yoko hissed, staring at Simon in awe. “How!? What!?”

“Protagonist Energy, weren’t you listening?” Zeruel deadpanned. 

“... Ah- um… why did my goggles turn into sunglasses?” Simon asked awkwardly, now holding a pair of giant red star shaped sunglasses, almost like Kamina’s iconic triangular shades, but a slightly different color, and also star shaped. “... And why do I feel manlier?”

“...You look manlier,” Yoko deadpanned. “Which is fucking weird since you’re obviously still fourteen.”

“It’s all that roaring fighting spirit!” Kamina boasted, smacking Simon across the bag and grinning like a loon, planting his foot on a conveniently appearing rock as he raised his arm and pointed high into the sky. “After all, my beloved little brother is none other than-

**[SIMON THE DIGGER]**

-and no matter what kind of wall is in his way, he’ll never fail to drill a hole straight through! His drill is the drill that will pierce the heavens!”

“... How the  _ fuck _ did you do that with your mouth,” Kittan deadpanned.

“Narrative fuckery, get used to it,” Zeruel advised him. 

Kittan gave her a side-eye. “...I’d rather ask your master,” he admitted.

“Narrative fuckery, get used to it,” Cattleya grinned lightly, patting the man on the shoulder. “You’ll live longer.”

“I- just- wh- fuck!” Kittan threw his hands up as he tried and failed to comprehend the concepts now burning themselves into his brain, fuming as he stomped away to go clear his head by blowing things up. Meanwhile, the Black Sisters and Yoko engrossed themselves in a wonderful conversation about weaponry.

Leeron finally poked his head back into the story as well, idly sidling out of his hiding spot in the storage crate on Gurren Lagann’s back and performing maintenance on one of the left leg servos.

"...I've been a  _ terrible  _ influence on you, my Master," Zeruel realized. 

"And I have been a terrible influence on you, haven't I been?" Cattleya shot back, grinning impishly. "A Familiar Bond is a two way street, you know." 

“You used to be so nice,” Zeruel sighed, frowning and crossing her arms dramatically as she leaned against Cattleya. “What happened to that?”

She paused. “... Actually don’t answer that.”

"We both know what happened," Cattleya deadpanned solemnly. 

“I already apologized for the gator incident, you know,” Zeruel muttered, shuddering a bit as she reflexively swiped her hands through her hair, as if trying to clean it out. “That was  _ so _ not my fault either.”

“Out of curiosity,” Cattleya asked, “Do you prefer the before me or the current me?”

“...” Zeruel paused, staring at Cattleya oddly. “... I prefer you. Doesn’t matter if it’s before or current or three thousand years in the future.”

Her master grinned. “Then why worry about it?”

<>

“... So how do we use our new superpowers anyway?” Kiyoh asked idly, twirling around a yoyo with practised ease as the group of teenagers and two-ish adults settled into the nearby cave where the Black siblings had all been staying for the past while (along with the rest of a small village, but the cave they were in was specifically their cave. There were many caves in the area).

“Look deep inside yourself and go from there?” Yoko offered. “It’s what I do.”

“That’s not… super helpful,” Kiyal muttered, huffing a bit and puffing out her cheeks petulantly. “Also, why do we all have these dumb tattoos on our boobs now anyway?”

“Probably something unique to this universe,” Zeruel noted, “none of the rest of us have those...”

“I mean, apparently mine works like a light switch,” Yoko shrugged, poking the boob tattoo on her own chest and subsequently lighting up in a burst of greenish power- much more restrained than it had been the first time she’d done so, thanks to the ease of several weeks of practice. “Power on, power off. So on and so forth.”

She made a very convincing impression of a green strobe light for emphasis, poking the tattoo repeatedly and flickering with power in such a way that she mostly just looked like a sort of turquoise tinted lightbulb.

"I  _ loathe _ the idea of using your  _ fucking Soul  _ as a god damn  _ strobe light,"  _ Zeruel hissed. "Even when it's  _ funny."  _

"Ahem?" Cattleya questioned. "Didn't you do the exact same thing when you figured it out last year?" 

Zeruel just huffed and crossed her arms indignantly, pouting and stomping her foot. “That was  _ not _ me, that was the prototype!  _ I _ used mine like a vibrator.”

Cattleya closed her eyes, looking like she was in a deep pain.

“... I think I’m just going to try and forget about that,” Kinon sighed, adjusting her glasses and shaking her head. “Either way, I suppose having fantastical godly power can only help in keeping our little village safe from the Beastmen that come to kill us every month or so.”

“Or, you know and here’s an idea,” Zeruel pointed out, “Take the fight  _ to the Beastmen _ and end the stupid war altogether?”

“You just want to fight something, don’t you,” Yoko deadpanned.

“Well  _ duh, _ that’s only what I’ve been wanting since the moment we  _ met _ ,” Zeruel shot right back, rolling her eyes. “Fuck it, I might as well do it all by myself at this point!”

"Go nuts," Yoko deadpanned. "Do you know where to go, and how to get there without cratering every village between here and there?" 

"...do  _ you  _ know where to go?" Zeruel shot back.

"...No," Yoko admitted, "but I sure do know how not to crater a village, unlike  _ someone  _ I happen to know..." 

“Hey, that only happened- er… twice…” Zeruel blushed awkwardly and looked away, crossing her arms and pretending like she still had a leg to stand on. “A-anyway! It’s not like it’d be  _ that _ hard to interrogate a few beastmen, right?”

“Probably not,” Yoko admitted dryly, then raised an eyebrow. “If you ever actually left any of them  _ alive.” _

Zeruel crossed her arms, pouting fiercely. 

“Now now, there’s always more chances in the future,” Cattleya chided gently as she approached their group, bearing trays of what looked and smelled like roasted lizard- which, given their location, most likely was. “It  _ would _ do you some good to practice restraint, though, Zeruel.”

  
“I’m  _ trying!” _ Zeruel, somehow, impossibly managed to pout even harder.


End file.
